Wow.  Thats all I can say for this week.  We had an amazing speaker and an exhilarating weekend.

Dan Baumann was our speaker this week.  You might recognize his name and rightfully so.  He actually has two books out..."A Beautiful Way" and "Imprisoned in Iran." He is an inspiring speaker and amazing person.  He shared so many awesome stories with us during the week while speaking in his topic so fittingly named "A Beautiful Way."  Dan's basic premise....JESUS LOVES ME!  It really is that simple.  He loves us when we fail, He loves us when we do great things, He just loves us period.  Our part is to simply recognize such love.  When we recognize how much we are loved it is only natural that we love back and seek more of that love.  It's so simple!  A great example that Dan explained was through his story of failures.  We often fail as human beings.  Also being human we like to relish on the fact that we failed and wallow in our sorrow.  Often the situation goes like this...

"God forgive me!  I failed you horribly."  Then we just wallow in our sorrow.  God:  "I forgive you."  "Thank you...gah, I'm so horrible I can't believed I failed."  God: "Hey look at this...check out what I've done for you."  "But God, I failed.  I'm horrible."  God: "You failed?  What? when? but hey look at what I have for you."

And so on.  We have to realize that we are loved as a person much more than our plan in life.  As our speaker put it last week in a beautiful story.  John 21:15-19.  Peter is reinstated.  What we don't realize is that what did Jesus do when he first called Peter?  He told him to follow me.  What is he doing in this passage?  Telling Peter to follow Him.  Peter's denial of Jesus, his failure, did not change the plan God had for Peter.  God loves Peter much more than his plan.

I feel like I am not doing this topic and speaker any justice at all.  I would highly suggest that you pick up, "A Beautiful Way" to dig deeper into the subject.

Besides our lecture we got to do the Ropes Course located here on Saturday.  It was a blast.  We got to do a number of obstacles including:  a low ropes course, a giant swing, a blindfolded rope game, and a high ropes course.  Let me explain.  Giant swing.....the greatest thing I have ever done in my life.  Climb up a 30 ft pole to a platform, attack a cable to your harness, and swing down.  Because of the decline in the hill it was perched on we had to travel at least 80 ft and must have been 40-50ft off the ground in the trees at our highest point.  It was unbelievably awesome!  I want to drag every single student in the youth group out here to just do it.  Despite the awesome experiences we had separately it was really cool to see how well we worked together as a team and how well we encouraged each other.  It was a day full of encouragement and teamwork and just pure enjoyment.

A little over two weeks until we leave for Thailand!  Found out some exciting news this week about our outreach.  The last two weeks of outreach, believe it or not, we will be living in an orphanage in eastern Thailand.  I, for one, was really excited to hear this and cannot wait for the experience.

Thanks for the continual prayers and support.  We love you all and miss you all!

Josh